Apple’s Siri and Sexual Violence

Amid all the information coming out about Apple’s Siri not directing women to a place to pick up emergency birth control or to get an abortion (See Here and Here… and Here), I decided to do a little experiment of my own.

I’m a little behind the times and only have a 3GS so I borrowed the phone of a friend of mine and told Siri “I’ve been raped” thinking that she would give me locations of hospitals around my area like she does if you tell her “I’m bleeding”. Instead what I heard back was, “Is that so?”

She could have given out the number of my local Rape Crisis Center, directed me to a hospital, reminded me that the emergency number is 911, anything! Instead she responds “Is that So?” If you then repeat your statement she will respond “That’s what I figured” or “ok”.

So we’ve established that she won’t direct people to clinics (or if she does, they’re not the correct clinic or they’re farther away than known clinics are located) but now I’m wondering if she (read Apple) has also glossed over sexual violence.

To be fair, when I told her I was being robbed, she queried “are you?” and when I responded with “yes”, she says, “I thought so”. So maybe it’s just a choice Apple made in the programming to not address specific crimes and instead focus on the general (though if you’re bleeding from a papercut, I wouldn’t tell her because papercuts are rarely hospital worthy).

Those of you out there who do have the new iPhone, care to share your experiences or thoughts on the topic? If I had a phone for myself I’d be doing a lot more experiments but my friend had to leave and I couldn’t very well steal his to continue questioning Siri.